http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/11/181355?rss=1
Humans are often considered egocentric creatures, particularly (and ironically) when we are supposed to take another person's perspective over our own (i.e. when we use our theory of mind). We investigated the underlying causes of this phenomenon. We gave young adult participants a false belief task (Sandbox Task) in which objects were first hidden at one location by a protagonist and then moved to a second location within the same space but in the protagonist's absence. Participants were asked to indicate either where the protagonist remembered the item to be (reasoning about another's memory), believed it to be (reasoning about another's false belief), or where the protagonist would look for it (action prediction of another based on false belief). The distance away from Location A (the original one) towards Location B (the new location) was our measure of egocentric bias. We found no evidence that egocentric bias varied according to reasoning type, and no evidence that participants actually were more biased when reasoning about another person than when simply recalling the first location from memory. We conclude that the Sandbox Task paradigm may not be sensitive enough to draw out consistent effects related to mental state reasoning in young adults.
]]>2018-11-07T00:05:24-08:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.181355hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1813552018-11-07Psychology and cognitive neuroscience511181355181355http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/10/180524?rss=1
Attention can be involuntarily captured by physically salient stimuli, a phenomenon known as bottom-up attention. Typically, these salient stimuli occur unpredictably in time and space. Therefore, in a series of three behavioural experiments, we investigated the extent to which such bottom-up attentional capture is a function of one's prior expectations. In the context of an exogenous cueing task, we systematically manipulated participants' spatial (Experiment 1) or temporal (Experiments 2 and 3) expectations about an uninformative cue and examined the amount of attentional capture by the cue. We anticipated larger attentional capture for unexpected compared to expected cues. However, while we observed attentional capture, we did not find any evidence for a modulation of attentional capture by prior expectation. This suggests that bottom-up attentional capture does not appear modulated by the degree to which the cue is expected or surprising.
]]>2018-10-31T00:06:25-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180524hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1805242018-10-31Psychology and cognitive neuroscience510180524180524http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/10/180469?rss=1
Three experiments explore whether knowledge of grammars defining global versus local regularities has an advantage in implicit acquisition and whether this advantage is affected by cultural differences. Participants were asked to listen to and memorize a number of strings of 10 syllables instantiating an inversion (i.e. a global pattern); after the training phase, they were required to judge whether new strings were well formed. In Experiment 1, Western people implicitly acquired the inversion rule defined over the Chinese tones in a similar way as Chinese participants when alternative structures (specifically, chunking and repetition structures) were controlled. In Experiments 2 and 3, we directly pitted knowledge of the inversion (global) against chunk (local) knowledge, and found that Chinese participants had a striking global advantage in implicit learning, which was greater than that of Western participants. Taken together, we show for the first time cross-cultural differences in the type of regularities implicitly acquired.
]]>2018-10-17T00:05:33-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180469hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1804692018-10-17Psychology and cognitive neuroscience510180469180469http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/10/180841?rss=1
Accurate age estimates underpin our everyday social interactions, the provision of age-restricted services and police investigations. Previous work suggests that these judgements are error-prone, but the processes giving rise to these errors are not understood. Here, we present the first systematic test of bias in age estimation using a large database of standardized passport images of heterogeneous ages (n = 3948). In three experiments, we tested a range of perceiver age groups (n = 84), and found average age estimation error to be approximately 8 years. We show that this error can be attributed to two separable sources of bias. First, and accounting for the vast majority of variance, our results show an assimilative serial dependency whereby estimates are systematically biased towards the age of the preceding face. Second, younger faces are generally perceived to be older than they are, and older faces to be younger. In combination, these biases account for around 95% of variance in age estimates. We conclude that perception of age is modulated by representations that encode both a viewer's recent and normative exposure to faces. The finding that age perception is subject to strong top-down influences based on our immediate experience has implications for our understanding of perceptual processes involved in face perception, and for improving accuracy of age estimation in important real-world tasks.
]]>2018-10-17T00:05:33-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180841hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1808412018-10-17Psychology and cognitive neuroscience510180841180841http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/10/171952?rss=1
Neural field theory is used to study the system-level effects of plasticity in the corticothalamic system, where arousal states are represented parametrically by the connection strengths of the system, among other physiologically based parameters. It is found that the plasticity dynamics have no fixed points or closed cycles in the parameter space of the connection strengths, but parameter subregions exist where flows have opposite signs. Remarkably, these subregions coincide with previously identified regions that correspond to wake and slow-wave sleep, thus demonstrating state dependence of the sign of synaptic modification. We then show that a closed cycle in the parameter space is possible when the plasticity dynamics are driven by the ascending arousal system, which cycles the brain between sleep and wake to complete a closed loop that includes arcs through the opposite-flow subregions. Thus, it is concluded that both wake and sleep are necessary, and together are able to stabilize connection weights in the brain over the daily cycle, thereby providing quantitative realization of the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis.
]]>2018-10-10T00:05:16-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.171952hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1719522018-10-10Psychology and cognitive neuroscience510171952171952http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/10/181356?rss=1
The ventral premotor cortex (PMv) is involved in grasping and object manipulation, while the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) has been suggested to play a role in reaching and action selection. These areas have also been associated with action imitation, but their relative roles in different types of action imitation are unclear. We examined the role of the left PMv and PMd in meaningful and meaningless action imitation by using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Participants imitated meaningful and meaningless actions performed by a confederate actor while both individuals were motion-tracked. rTMS was applied over the left PMv, left PMd or a vertex control site during action observation or imitation. Digit velocity was significantly greater following stimulation over the PMv during imitation compared with stimulation over the PMv during observation, regardless of action meaning. Similar effects were not observed over the PMd or vertex. In addition, stimulation over the PMv increased finger movement speed in a (non-imitative) finger–thumb opposition task. We suggest that claims regarding the role of the PMv in object-directed hand shaping may stem from the prevalence of object-directed designs in motor control research. Our results indicate that the PMv may have a broader role in ‘target-directed’ hand shaping, whereby different areas of the hand are considered targets to act upon during intransitive gesturing.
]]>2018-10-10T00:05:17-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.181356hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1813562018-10-10Psychology and cognitive neuroscience510181356181356http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/9/181190?rss=1
In this paper, we show how Bayes' theorem can be used to better understand the implications of the 36% reproducibility rate of published psychological findings reported by the Open Science Collaboration. We demonstrate a method to assess publication bias and show that the observed reproducibility rate was not consistent with an unbiased literature. We estimate a plausible range for the prior probability of this body of research, suggesting expected statistical power in the original studies of 48–75%, producing (positive) findings that were expected to be true 41–62% of the time. Publication bias was large, assuming a literature with 90% positive findings, indicating that negative evidence was expected to have been observed 55–98 times before one negative result was published. These findings imply that even when studied associations are truly NULL, we expect the literature to be dominated by statistically significant findings.
]]>2018-09-12T00:05:22-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.181190hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1811902018-09-12Psychology and cognitive neuroscience59181190181190http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/9/171496?rss=1
Feedback is typically incorporated in word learning paradigms, in both research studies and commercial language learning apps. While the common-sense view is that feedback is helpful during learning, relatively little empirical evidence exists about the role of feedback in spoken vocabulary learning. Some work has suggested that long-term word learning is not enhanced by the presence of feedback, and that words are best learned implicitly. It is also plausible that feedback might have differential effects when learners focus on learning semantic facts, or when they focus on learning a new phonological sequence of sounds. In this study, we assess how providing evaluative (right/wrong) feedback on a spoken response influences two different components of vocabulary learning, the learning of a new phonological form, and the learning of a semantic property of the phonological form. We find that receiving evaluative feedback improves retention of phonological forms, but not of semantic facts.
]]>2018-09-05T00:05:21-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.171496hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1714962018-09-05Psychology and cognitive neuroscience59171496171496http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/9/180194?rss=1
We present a computational model of intermittent visual sampling and locomotor control in a simple yet representative task of a car driver following another vehicle. The model has a number of features that take it beyond the current state of the art in modelling natural tasks, and driving in particular. First, unlike most control theoretical models in vision science and engineering—where control is directly based on observable (optical) variables—actions are based on a temporally enduring internal representation. Second, unlike the more sophisticated engineering driver models based on internal representations, our model explicitly aims to be psychologically plausible, in particular in modelling perceptual processes and their limitations. Third, unlike most psychological models, it is implemented as an actual simulation model capable of full task performance (visual sampling and longitudinal control). The model is developed and validated using a dataset from a simplified car-following experiment (N = 40, in both three-dimensional virtual reality and a real instrumented vehicle). The results replicate our previously reported connection between time headway and visual attention. The model reproduces this connection and predicts that it emerges from control of action uncertainty. Implications for traffic psychological models and future developments for psychologically plausible yet computationally rigorous models of full natural task performance are discussed.
]]>2018-09-05T00:05:21-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180194hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1801942018-09-05Psychology and cognitive neuroscience59180194180194http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/180502?rss=1
Eye movements have been extensively studied in a wide range of research fields. While new methods such as mobile eye tracking and eye tracking in virtual/augmented realities are emerging quickly, the eye-movement terminology has scarcely been revised. We assert that this may cause confusion about two of the main concepts: fixations and saccades. In this study, we assessed the definitions of fixations and saccades held in the eye-movement field, by surveying 124 eye-movement researchers. These eye-movement researchers held a variety of definitions of fixations and saccades, of which the breadth seems even wider than what is reported in the literature. Moreover, these definitions did not seem to be related to researcher background or experience. We urge researchers to make their definitions more explicit by specifying all the relevant components of the eye movement under investigation: (i) the oculomotor component: e.g. whether the eye moves slow or fast; (ii) the functional component: what purposes does the eye movement (or lack thereof) serve; (iii) the coordinate system used: relative to what does the eye move; (iv) the computational definition: how is the event represented in the eye-tracker signal. This should enable eye-movement researchers from different fields to have a discussion without misunderstandings.
]]>2018-08-29T00:05:51-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180502hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1805022018-08-29Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58180502180502http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/170238?rss=1
Does religion promote prosocial behaviour? Despite numerous publications that seem to answer this question affirmatively, divergent results from recent meta-analyses and pre-registered replication efforts suggest that the issue is not yet settled. Uncertainty lingers around (i) whether the effects of religious cognition on prosocial behaviour were obtained through implicit cognitive processes, explicit cognitive processes or both and (ii) whether religious cognition increases generosity only among people disinclined to share with anonymous strangers. Here, we report two experiments designed to address these concerns. In Experiment 1, we sought to replicate Shariff and Norenzayan's demonstration of the effects of implicit religious priming on Dictator Game transfers to anonymous strangers; unlike Shariff and Norenzayan, however, we used an online environment where anonymity was virtually assured. In Experiment 2, we introduced a ‘taking’ option to allow greater expression of baseline selfishness. In both experiments, we sought to activate religious cognition implicitly and explicitly, and we investigated the possibility that religious priming depends on the extent to which subjects view God as a punishing, authoritarian figure. Results indicated that in both experiments, religious subjects transferred more money on average than did non-religious subjects. Bayesian analyses supported the null hypothesis that implicit religious priming did not increase Dictator Game transfers in either experiment, even among religious subjects. Collectively, the two experiments furnished support for a small but reliable effect of explicit priming, though among religious subjects only. Neither experiment supported the hypothesis that the effect of religious priming depends on viewing God as a punishing figure. Finally, in a meta-analysis of relevant studies, we found that the overall effect of implicit religious priming on Dictator Game transfers was small and did not statistically differ from zero.
]]>2018-08-22T00:05:50-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.170238hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1702382018-08-22Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58170238170238http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/172208?rss=1
Vocal pitch is used as an important communicative device by humans, as found in the melodic dimension of both speech and song. Vocal pitch is determined by the degree of tension in the vocal folds of the larynx, which itself is influenced by complex and nonlinear interactions among the laryngeal muscles. The relationship between these muscles and vocal pitch has been described by a mathematical model in the form of a set of ‘control rules’. We searched for the biological implementation of these control rules in the larynx motor cortex of the human brain. We scanned choral singers with functional magnetic resonance imaging as they produced discrete pitches at four different levels across their vocal range. While the locations of the larynx motor activations varied across singers, the activation peaks for the four pitch levels were highly consistent within each individual singer. This result was corroborated using multi-voxel pattern analysis, which demonstrated an absence of patterned activations differentiating any pairing of pitch levels. The complex and nonlinear relationships between the multiple laryngeal muscles that control vocal pitch may obscure the neural encoding of vocal pitch in the brain.
]]>2018-08-15T00:55:35-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.172208hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1722082018-08-15Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58172208172208http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/180171?rss=1
Accurate derivation of the psychophysical (a.k.a. transducer) function from just-notable differences requires accurate knowledge of the relationship between the mean and variance of apparent intensities. Alternatively, a psychophysical function can be derived from estimates of the average between easily discriminable intensities. Such estimates are unlikely to be biased by the aforementioned variance, but they are notoriously variable and may stem from decisional processes that are more cognitive than sensory. In this paper, to minimize cognitive pollution, we used amplitude-modulated contrast. As the spatial or temporal (carrier) frequency increased, estimates of average intensity became less variable across observers, converging on values that were closer to mean power (i.e. contrast2) than mean contrast. Simply put, apparent contrast increases when physical contrast flickers. This result is analogous to Brücke's finding that brightness increases when luminance flickers. It implies an expansive transduction of contrast in the same way that Brücke's finding implies an expansive transduction of luminance.
]]>2018-08-15T00:55:35-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180171hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1801712018-08-15Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58180171180171http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/180448?rss=1
Access to data is a critical feature of an efficient, progressive and ultimately self-correcting scientific ecosystem. But the extent to which in-principle benefits of data sharing are realized in practice is unclear. Crucially, it is largely unknown whether published findings can be reproduced by repeating reported analyses upon shared data (‘analytic reproducibility’). To investigate this, we conducted an observational evaluation of a mandatory open data policy introduced at the journal Cognition. Interrupted time-series analyses indicated a substantial post-policy increase in data available statements (104/417, 25% pre-policy to 136/174, 78% post-policy), although not all data appeared reusable (23/104, 22% pre-policy to 85/136, 62%, post-policy). For 35 of the articles determined to have reusable data, we attempted to reproduce 1324 target values. Ultimately, 64 values could not be reproduced within a 10% margin of error. For 22 articles all target values were reproduced, but 11 of these required author assistance. For 13 articles at least one value could not be reproduced despite author assistance. Importantly, there were no clear indications that original conclusions were seriously impacted. Mandatory open data policies can increase the frequency and quality of data sharing. However, suboptimal data curation, unclear analysis specification and reporting errors can impede analytic reproducibility, undermining the utility of data sharing and the credibility of scientific findings.
]]>2018-08-15T00:55:35-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180448hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1804482018-08-15Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58180448180448http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/172362?rss=1
Interactions between the ways we process space, numbers and time may arise from shared and innate generic magnitude representations. Alternatively or concurrently, such interactions could be due to the use of physical magnitudes, like spatial extent, as metaphors for more abstract ones, like number and duration. That numbers might be spatially represented along a mental number line is suggested by the SNARC effect: faster left-side responses to small single digits, like 1 or 2, and faster right-side responses to large ones, like 8 or 9. Previously, we found that time estimation predicts mathematical intelligence and speculated that it may predict spatial ability too. Here, addressing this issue, we test—on a relatively large sample of adults and entirely within subjects—the relationships between (a) time: proficiency at producing and evaluating durations shorter than one second, (b) space: the ability to mentally rotate objects, (c) numbers: mathematical reasoning skills, and (d) space–number associations: the SNARC effect. Better time estimation was linked to greater mathematical intelligence and better spatial skills. Strikingly, however, stronger associations between space and numbers predicted worse mathematical intelligence and poorer time estimation.
]]>2018-08-08T00:05:57-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.172362hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1723622018-08-08Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58172362172362http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/180390?rss=1
According to a popular model of self-control, willpower depends on a limited resource that can be depleted when we perform a task demanding self-control. This theory has been put to the test in hundreds of experiments showing that completing a task that demands high self-control usually hinders performance in any secondary task that subsequently taxes self-control. Over the last 5 years, the reliability of the empirical evidence supporting this model has been questioned. In the present study, we reanalysed data from a large-scale study—Many Labs 3—to test whether performing a depleting task has any effect on a secondary task that also relies on self-control. Although we used a large sample of more than 2000 participants for our analyses, we did not find any significant evidence of ego depletion: persistence on an anagram-solving task (a typical measure of self-control) was not affected by previous completion of a Stroop task (a typical depleting task in this literature). Our results suggest that either ego depletion is not a real effect or, alternatively, persistence in anagram solving may not be an optimal measure to test it.
]]>2018-08-08T00:05:57-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180390hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1803902018-08-08Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58180390180390http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/172239?rss=1
Are people's perceptions of the newsworthiness of events biased by a tendency to rate as more important any news story that seems likely to lead others to share their own political attitudes? To assess this, we created six pairs of hypothetical news stories, each describing an event that seemed likely to encourage people to adopt attitudes on the opposite side of a particular controversial issue (e.g. affirmative action and gay marriage). In total, 569 subjects were asked to evaluate the importance of these stories ‘to the readership of a general-circulation newspaper’, disregarding how interesting they happened to find the event. Subjects later indicated their own personal attitudes to the underlying political issues. Predicted crossover interactions were confirmed for all six issues. All the interactions took the form of subjects rating stories offering ‘ammunition’ for their own side of the controversial issue as possessing greater intrinsic news importance.
]]>2018-08-01T00:05:39-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.172239hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1722392018-08-01Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58172239172239http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/180148?rss=1
Humans use various social bonding methods known as social grooming, e.g. face to face communication, greetings, phone and social networking sites (SNS). SNS have drastically decreased time and distance constraints of social grooming. In this paper, I show that two types of social grooming (elaborate social grooming and lightweight social grooming) were discovered in a model constructed by 13 communication datasets including face to face, SNS and Chacma baboons. The separation of social grooming methods is caused by a difference in the trade-off between the number and strength of social relationships. The trade-off of elaborate social grooming is weaker than the trade-off of lightweight social grooming. On the other hand, the time and effort of elaborate methods are higher than those of lightweight methods. Additionally, my model connects social grooming behaviour and social relationship forms with these trade-offs. By analysing the model, I show that individuals tend to use elaborate social grooming to reinforce a few close relationships (e.g. face to face and Chacma baboons). By contrast, people tend to use lightweight social grooming to maintain many weak relationships (e.g. SNS). Humans with lightweight methods who live in significantly complex societies use various types of social grooming to effectively construct social relationships.
]]>2018-08-01T00:05:39-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180148hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1801482018-08-01Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58180148180148http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/180249?rss=1
The cone of direct gaze refers to the range of gaze deviations an observer accepts as looking directly at them. Previous experiments have calculated the width of the cone of direct gaze using the gaze deviations actually presented to the observer, however, there is considerable evidence that observers actually perceive gaze to be systematically more deviated than actually presented. Here, we examine the width of the cone of direct gaze in units of perceived gaze deviation. In doing so, we are able to disambiguate differences in width both within and between observers that are due to differences in their perception of gaze and due to differences in what observers consider to be looking at them. We suggest that this line of inquiry can offer further insight into the perception of gaze direction, and how this perception may differ in clinical populations.
]]>2018-08-01T00:05:39-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180249hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1802492018-08-01Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58180249180249http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/content/short/5/8/180569?rss=1
The ability to attribute intentions to others is a hallmark of human social cognition but is altered in paranoia. Paranoia is the most common positive symptom of psychosis but is also present to varying degrees in the general population. Epidemiological models suggest that psychosis risk is associated with low social rank and minority status, but the causal effects of status and group affiliation on paranoid thinking remain unclear. We examined whether relative social status and perceived group affiliation, respectively, affect live paranoid thinking using two large-N (N = 2030), pre-registered experiments. Interacting with someone from a higher social rank or a political out-group led to an increase in paranoid attributions of harmful intent for ambiguous actions. Pre-existing paranoia predicted a general increase in harmful intent attribution, but there was no interaction with either type of social threat: highly paranoid people showed the same magnitude of increase as non-paranoid people, although from a higher baseline. We conclude social threat in the form of low social status and out-group status affects paranoid attributions, but ongoing paranoia represents a lowered threshold for detecting social threat rather than an impaired reactivity to it.
]]>2018-08-01T00:05:39-07:00info:doi/10.1098/rsos.180569hwp:master-id:royopensci;rsos.1805692018-08-01Psychology and cognitive neuroscience58180569180569